MPs salaries set to rise
‘Review
Body on Senior Salaries Report # 64: Review of Parliamentary Pay, Pensions and
Allowances 2007’ (Cm. 7270) examines the pay, pensions and allowances for
members of the House of Commons and House of Lords.
Honours for Michael Parkinson and Kylie
Minogue
‘The
London Gazette New Year Honours List Supplement (December 2007)’ is the
first Honours List recommended by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Its aim is to
reflect and pay tribute to outstanding achievement and service across the
entire community.
Communities and Local Government 2007 performance
reviewed
‘Department
Annual Report 2007’ (HC 170) reports on the performance of the Department
for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). The single theme that underlies
the 2007 report is delivery.
Shareholder Executive reviewed
The Shareholder Executive was established in 2003 to act as
an effective owner of businesses that are owned or part owned by government. It
is now an operational group within the Department of Trade and Industry with a
portfolio covering 27 businesses and a combined turnover of £21 billion.
This Report
'The
Shareholder Executive and Public Sector Businesses’ (HC 409) examines the
status and performance of the agency.
Governance: reviewing the Attorney General’s role
and Public Petitions
In its Green Paper
'The
Governance of Britain' (Cm. 7170), the Government set out proposals for
radical constitutional reform to rebalance power between the executive,
legislature and the people.
Among the proposals to improve the
engagement between Parliament and the people were:
- A commitment to
reforming the role of the Attorney General
- Changes to the system of
Public Petitions and Early Day Motions.
Government announces draft legislative
programme
This Command Paper
'The
Governance of Britain - The Government's Draft Legislative Programme' (Cm.
7175) is the first annual statement setting out a draft legislative
programme to be laid before the next Parliament.
Where previously the
legislative programme was not divulged in advance of the Queen's Speech at the
State Opening of Parliament, this new annual statement allows Parliament and
the public advance notice of the legislation that the Government plans to bring
forward.
Restructuring the Post Office
The Government believes that the current network of Post
Offices is unsustainable and has outlined plans for restructuring, which
involve closures, relocations and new delivery mechanisms.
This Report
‘Stamp
of Approval? Restructuring the Post Office Network’ (HC 276) examines
this proposed restructuring strategy.
Transforming service delivery across Government
The focus of the Varney Review is how to save the government, citizens and businesses time and money by looking at potentially integrating front-line service delivery.
As technology revolutionizes the way the service sector interacts with customers, a gap is develops between the public and private service sectors.
Strong and Prosperous Communities: the White Paper
on Local Government
The Paper examines ways of creating and sustaining strong
local communities, emphasising the key role of local government in strategic
leadership and new powers for local councils.
The Paper discusses
effective, accountable and responsive local government seeking to position
local government as a strategic leader in transforming local services and
creating community cohesion.
15m mail items lost, stolen or damaged a year
In March 2006, Royal Mail accepted a new quality of service and price control regime proposed by Postcomm, the regulator of mail services in the UK. The new arrangements run from April 2006 to March 2010.
In addition to allowing Royal Mail to raise the price of first- and second-class stamps, Royal Mail also has new quality of service targets and associated financial incentives aimed at improving mail services.
£1.8bn spent on public sector consulting
In 2005-06, central government spent £1.8 billion on consulting, while an estimated £2.8 billion public sector funding in total was spent on consultants. This Report examines the use of consultants in central government during 2005-06.
Political party financing in UK is “unstable”
Political parties are key institutions in any system of representative democracy.
In this Report, the Constitutional Affairs Committee finds that the present system of party financing in the UK is “unstable”.
Government information websites to close
The Transformational Government strategy was laid out in
the 2005 publication
"Transformational
government: enabled by technology" (Cm. 6683), outlining a six year
improvement journey for public services.
This is the first
Transformational Government Annual Report, covering progress across the three
main themes of the strategy: customer-centric services, shared services and
professionalism.